Search:

Results 271 to 280 of 475 | « previous |

This is your mind on plants / by Pollan, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboos Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: people around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. We don't usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So then what is a "drug?" And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In THIS IS YOUR MIND ON PLANTS, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs -- opium, caffeine, and mescaline -- and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and such fraught feelings? A unique blend of history, science, memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively -- as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that's one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay written more than 25 years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world"--
Subjects: Psychotropic plants.; Opium.; Mescaline.; Caffeine.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Queen of diamonds : a novel / by Marsh, Beezy,author.;
"London, 1922. Orphan girl Alice dreams of more than toiling long hours in Pink's jam factory. Inspired by stories about the legendary Queen of Thieves, Mary Carr, who terrorized the streets of Victorian London, Alice decides to set up her own gang: The Forty Thieves. She has an accomplice too: sly seamstress Kate Felix from Whitechapel persuades Alice they'd make the perfect team. Before long, the pair are making headlines in the glitzy world of 1920s Soho, known for their daring heists and for the row of heavy diamond rings that Alice uses like brass knuckles in her frequent brawls. What Alice soon discovers is that a life of crime makes her powerful enemies, including some who are closer to home than they'd like. Alice must sacrifice more than she ever imagined--but the toughest and most beautiful diamonds are formed under pressure. From squalid slums and the grim confines of Holloway Prison to the glittering nightclubs of London in the roaring twenties, Queen of Diamonds is a fast-paced, gritty story of love, loss and loyalty to the gang"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Female offenders; Gangs; Nineteen twenties; Orphans; Survival; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The black bird oracle / by Harkness, Deborah,1965-author.;
"Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana's family line. Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family's future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It's time you came home, Diana. On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family's dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power -- if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it."--
Subjects: Vampire fiction.; Paranormal fiction.; Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; Magic; Man-woman relationships; Physicians; Vampires;
Available copies: 3 / Total copies: 3
unAPI

Tiananmen Square / by Wen, Lai,author.;
As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her parents: Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai's grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances. But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works-Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others-that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love. A gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party's insistence on conformity-and a new world opens before her. When student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Novels.; Books and reading; College students; Politicians; Protest movements; Young women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The amazing Spider-Man. [videorecording] / by DeHaan, Dane,1987-; Ditko, Steve.; Feore, Colm.; Field, Sally.; Foxx, Jamie.; Garfield, Andrew,1983-; Giamatti, Paul.; Jones, Felicity.; Kurtzman, Alex.; Lee, Stan,1922-; Mindel, Daniel.; Orci, Roberto.; Pinkner, Jeff.; Stone, Emma,1988-; Webb, Marc.; Zimmer, Hans.; Columbia Pictures.; Marvel Entertainment, LLC.; Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (Firm);
Music by Hans Zimmer and the Magnificent Six ; director of photography, Dan Mindel.Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Campbell Scott.It's great to be Spider-Man. For Peter Parker, there's no feeling quite like swinging between skyscrapers, embracing being the hero, and spending time with Gwen. But being Spider-Man comes at a price: only Spider-Man can protect his fellow New Yorkers from the formidable villains that threaten the city. With the emergence of Electro, Peter must confront a foe far more powerful than he. And as his old friend Harry Osborn returns, Peter comes to realize that all of his enemies have one thing in common: OsCorp.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.DVD, region 1, widescreen (2.40:1) presentation; Dolby digital 5.1, audio description track Dolby surround.
Subjects: Action and adventure films.; Crime; Feature films.; Spider-Man (Fictitious character); Superhero films.; Superheroes;
© c2014., Sony Pictures Home Entertainment,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Private Moscow / by Patterson, James,1947-author.; Hamdy, Adam,1974-author.;
"An invitation from an old friend draws Jack Morgan into a deadly conspiracy. On a cold January morning, Jack Morgan stands inside the New York Stock Exchange with his former US Marine comrade whose company is being launched onto the market, eagerly awaiting the opening bell. But before the bell rings, a bullet rips through the air and finds its mark. In the aftermath of the murder, the victim's wife hires Jack to find the killer. As the head of Private, Jack has at his disposal the world's largest investigation agency. What he discovers shakes him to his core. Jack identifies another murder in Moscow that appears to be linked. So he heads to Russia, and begins to uncover a conspiracy that could have global consequences. With powerful forces plotting against him, will Jack Morgan make it out alive?"--Publisher description.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Morgan, Jack (Fictitious character); Conspiracies; Murder; Private investigators; Private security services; Secrecy;
Available copies: 3 / Total copies: 4
unAPI

The last second / by Coulter, Catherine,author.; Ellison, J. T.,author.;
"It's Bastille Day in France, and the private French space agency Galactus--France's answer to Space X, owned by the eccentric treasure hunter Jean-Pierre Broussard--has just sent a satellite payload into orbit. Billed as a 'communications' satellite, it harbors a frightening reality: a nuclear electromagnetic pulse has been hidden aboard. In days, when the satellite is in position, Galactus's head and Broussard's second in command, Dr. Neveah Patil, will have the power to lay waste to the world with her EMP, and create her own immortality with the Holy Grail--the stones of the heavens and the very treasure Broussard has spent his life searching for. The countdown has begun, and Special Agents Nicholas Drummond and Michaela Caine will go down to the wire to stop this heinous attack"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Spy fiction.; Drummond, Nicholas (Fictitious character); Great Britain. Metropolitan Police Office. Criminal Investigation Department; United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation; Artificial satellites; Electromagnetic pulse;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

Soul [videorecording] / by Ayoade, Richard,1977-voice actor.; Bassett, Angela,voice actor.; Braga, Alice,voice actor.; Diggs, Daveed,voice actor.; Feimster, Fortune,voice actor.; Fey, Tina,1970-voice actor.; Foxx, Jamie,voice actor.; Norton, Graham,1963-voice actor.; Powers, Kemp,voice actor.; Rashad, Phylicia,1948-voice actor.; Squibb, June,1929-voice actor.; Studi, Wes,voice actor.; Walt Disney Home Entertainment (Firm),production company.; Buena Vista Home Entertainment (Firm),film distributor.;
Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Daveed Diggs, Wes Studi, Fortune Feimster, June Squibb.Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. A misstep takes him from New York City to The Great Before, a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities before going to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human life. As Joe tries to show 22 what's great about life, he may discover the answers to the most important questions.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.MPAA rating: PG.Described video for the blind and visually impaired.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0.
Subjects: Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Comedy films.; Children's films.; Animated films.; Music teachers; Jazz musicians; Future life; Intermediate state; Soul;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
unAPI

The other woman by Silva, Daniel,1960-author.;
In an isolated village in the mountains of Andalusia, a mysterious Frenchwoman begins work on a dangerous memoir. It is the story of a man she once loved in the Beirut of old, and a child taken from her in treason's name. The woman is the keeper of the Kremlin's most closely guarded secret. Long ago, the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West-a mole who stands on the doorstep of ultimate power. Only one man can unravel the conspiracy: Gabriel Allon, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel's vaunted secret intelligence service. Gabriel has battled the dark forces of the new Russia before, at great personal cost. Now he and the Russians will engage in a final epic showdown, with the fate of the postwar global order hanging in the balance. Gabriel is lured into the hunt for the traitor after his most important asset inside Russian intelligence is brutally assassinated while trying to defect in Vienna. His quest for the truth will lead him backward in time, to the twentieth century's greatest act of treason, and, finally, to a spellbinding climax along the banks of the Potomac River outside Washington that will leave readers breathless.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Spy fiction.; Allon, Gabriel (Fictitious character); Intelligence officers; Terrorists; Terrorism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

A narrow door / by Harris, Joanne,1964-author.;
"Now I'm in charge, the gates are my gates. The rules are my rules." It's an incendiary moment for St Oswald's school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered. But Rebecca is here to make her mark. She'll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. After all ... You can't keep a good woman down.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Psychological fiction.; Ambition; Brothers and sisters; Endowed public schools (Great Britain); Memory; Missing persons; Murder; Secrecy; Women school principals; Women teachers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Results 271 to 280 of 475 | « previous |